


Short 23 - The Fury of the Time Lord

by stgjr



Series: "The Power of a Name" Series 2 - "Time Lord Triumphant" [22]
Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Multi-Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 19:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10703391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stgjr/pseuds/stgjr
Summary: Our narrator sets out to show Duke Ryan and his assassin what it means to provoke the fury of a Time Lord.





	Short 23 - The Fury of the Time Lord

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on September 26th, 2014.

The TARDIS was quiet. The still, hollow quiet of a lifeless ship.  
  
Even I could barely be described as alive.  
  
Oh, my hearts beat. Synapses fired and neurons passed electrical pulses on and lungs inhaled and exhaled. But that was just mechanics. Life is more than that.  
  
All I had was the cold fury.  
  
I stood alone in the TARDIS, surrounded by the beginnings of a distant galaxy billions of years before organic life came to be in this cosmos. All alone in the dark, in the cold of the early universe, with the youngest stars just starting to burn. Alone with just the ice that had taken root in my very hearts.  
  
The TARDIS displayed data for me. The bomb that had murdered Katherine and many others had been detonated by remote. A cellular signal to a receiver in the pot. A signal my TARDIS easily plucked out of the ether from all the others.  
  
The tracing was finished. I knew where I was going next.  
  
  
  
  
The assassin was very good at pretending to be other people. He had turned himself into the persona of a sad loner, made bitter by a mother suffering form dementia and placed in a lower tier health facility supported by government funds. The perfect stereotype of the "lone nut" type of political assassin.  
  
After the bombing, he swapped covers when going to a DropShip to take him out of the system. He would swap them again in later systems, in what would be a futile effort to stay out of the grasp of the state security apparatus.  
  
He never expected something like me. How could he? I was an urban legend in the Inner Sphere, a figure of story and myth more than reality, a dashing mystery agent of the Commonwealth charged with Katherine's protection. Even my TARDIS had been given a dozen wrong explanations to what it actually was, some of them hilarious.  
  
Well, hilarious before. I... wasn't in a mood for hilarity.  
  
I didn't knock on the door of the cabin on his DropShip. My sonic granted me instant admittance. The assassin was seated by himself, reading. Staying completely in character.  
  
To a point, anyway. As the door opened he turned toward me and I saw the pistol come up from the hiding place at his back. My sonic disruptor came up and absorbed the shots; flechette shots from a needle gun.  
  
Seeing his shots hit blue energy and collapse harmlessly, the assassin backed up toward the other side of his room. His eyes narrowed. Ah yes, he was searching for a weakness. Something in the environment to throw me off track, to buy him a chance to escape. He looked over at the port looking out into space and stepped back further. Yes, bracing himself... catch me by surprise and get around me as I was drawn toward the hull breach. Supremely risky, but potentially effective.  
  
I caught him just as he swung the gun over. A setting four blast, strong enough to send him flying into the counter-top of his furnished stateroom. He had the wits to keep his gun on him. It started to come up again. I switched to Setting 21 and got a horrible scream as my answer. The sonic disruptor's effects struck his brain directly, incapacitating him with minimal neural damage. I didn't want him to become a vegetable, after all. That would be far too easy.  
  
He tried to direct the gun toward me. A shot went to my right. But the pain was too much. He dropped the gun before he could fire a second time.  
  
As I disabled him, I had no words. No banter. No jokes or off-putting remarks, nothing like I usually did. I couldn't even fathom such, not with the cold fury I felt.  
  
Once he was unconscious, I picked him up and carried him into the TARDIS.  
  
  
  
  
Ryan Steiner was sitting in his study reading a book when I stepped out of the shadows. "I was wondering when you would come," Ryan mused quietly. "The Doctor, correct?"  
  
I said nothing.  
  
"I didn't intend for Katherine to be taken by the blast, you know. She was of more use to me alive, as a weapon against Victor. She had potential. It was a shame she had to die too."  
  
I answered him with furious silence.  
  
"The Davions will lead us to ruin," Ryan insisted. "I am the remaining hope for my nation!"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Who are you to judge me?!", Ryan thundered.  
  
Silence.  
  
"You're not just another hireling of Hanse Davion. You're something more." When I gave him no answer Ryan sighed. "Then we don't talk."  
  
I noticed the slight movement. He was hitting buttons under his desk. Two wardrobes opened and revealed automated machine gun turrets that swiveled toward me. They fired and struck the shield generated by my sonic disruptor.  
  
Seconds later, armed men burst through the main door and opened fire as well.  
  
And all the while, Ryan Steiner fled.  
  
He fled through a door in the side of the room, hidden from plain sight. He went through the secret passage that went straight down to his private hanger. He pulled on a flight vest and climbed into an aerospace fighter. Years of training kicked in across decades of retirement, readying him to fly as he taxied out of the hanger. His fighter picked up speed and he brought the nose up to get it in the air. His palatial residence grew smaller by the second as he hit his afterburners.  
  
At which point it exploded.  
  
At this point, Ryan undoubtedly felt tense relief. He was alive. He was reasonably certain I wasn't, that his weapons and his armed men had kept me pinned down long enough for the bombs to get me.  
  
It was probably a few moments later that his displays went haywire.  
  
i can imagine it. The hoarse pleas, the cussing, the words every pilot uses as their instruments fail and they lose control of their aircraft. It spun around to an upside down position and moved directly toward a mountainside. Ryan fought to get control back. Almost too long.  
  
And then, on its own, the ejection system triggered. He was thrown from his craft, just before he reached the point of no return. As his ejection module descended to the ground below, his craft plowed into the mountain and created a massive explosion of flame and plasma.  
  
He hit the ground roughly given the speed he was still traveling at, grumbling and crying out in some pain. After several moments he tried to pick himself up, seeing the grass below him tinted with the red of the flames from his destroyed craft. The flames illuminated the area around him in a terrible crimson glow.  
  
A shadow fell over him.  
  
Ryan Steiner looked up...  
  
...and he saw my face.  
  
  
  
  
I was waiting when Ryan Steiner awoke. He was not manacled. He was not bound. When he moved, a forceshield stopped him. He looked around; he was in the TARDIS door's walkway, just a foot from the door itself. A tight force cube kept him pinned to the door's entryway ramp. "Where... where am I?"  
  
I did not immediately answer. I flipped a couple of switches instead.  
  
" _Where have you taken me?!_ ", he demanded.  
  
I answered by snapping my fingers.  
  
The TARDIS door opened and he turned to look out. He gasped.  
  
Outside was a stone wall of sorts. Not just an stone wall, but one that seemed to stretch to infinity in all directions.  
  
And it seemed to be made of people.  
  
Humanoid, not-humanoid, with spiked or pointed heads or gigantic bodies, they were all splayed against the wall, their mouths stuck open in mute screams, expressions of disbelief or anger or terror on their faces.  
  
Ryan stumbled back until he hit the force shield. He spun around and faced me. "What... what is this?"  
  
"The Source Wall," I answered, my voice flat and low. "An eternal prison of beings locked in stone for grasping at power they could not have."  
  
"You... you're going to space me?", Ryan asked.  
  
"No. You won't die. You'll be part of the Wall."  
  
I reached for the TARDIS atmosphere control.  
  
" _Forever_."  
  
Ryan's face went white. He still couldn't grasp the enormity of the punishment I was inflicting upon him. But he could see something of the scope. "No... no please, Doctor.... I have a wife! I have a son!"  
  
I didn't answer as my hand punched a command in on the atmosphere control.  
  
"I'll give you anything! Anything you want!" Ryan fell to his knees. " _Please Doctor! Show mercy!_ "  
  
I replied by pressing the control one last time.  
  
In that instant I released the pressure seal over the TARDIS entrance. The atmosphere of the cubical, energy-shaped cell Ryan was trapped in was sucked out into space. The de-pressurization was powerful enough that it dragged him along for the ride. He tried to scream, a faint, " _Noooo!_ " that barely had enough air to travel through. Panicked tears came from his face and became droplets in space.  
  
The speed of his depressurization was sufficient that he didn't have time to really suffer in the vacuum before he slammed into the Source Wall. His hands and feet became stone. The Wall claimed him, the transition of flesh and clothing to stone seeming to speed up as it moved up his limbs and to his torso... and then his neck and the head above. Ryan Steiner's face was locked into an expression of terror at his fate.  
  
And that was how he would forever remain.  
  
  
  
  
I could have thrown the assassin in with Ryan. I briefly considered it.  
  
But I had another outcome in mind.  
  
Some preliminary work was required. A message was sent by proper channels. And so I visited an expansive warehouse freezer once... and then returned the next day. I had my purple parka and heavy winter clothing on for comfort. I stood just in front of the TARDIS door as I waited. The cold of the freezer seemed no worse than the cold within me, the fury that had not been sated.  
  
A burst of light appeared before me. Forms emerged. Monstrous things, brutal and powerful, dressed both crudely and with livery of blue and pale green. Behind them came more elaborately dressed figures, pale humanoids of exquisite beauty and appearance. A black feline stepped through, his golden eyes regarding me with a combination of caution and condescension. He took his place to one side of the portal.  
  
The final figure to emerge was dressed in a stunning ice blue gown. She was beautiful beyond words. Her green eyes, as sharp as a feline's, looked at me intently. A small smile came to her lips at the intriguing circumstances of our reunion. For we had met once before.  
  
For she was Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. Mab, Ruler of the Unseelie Fae. Mab, the Queen of the Winter Court.  
  
I bowed respectfully. "I thank you, Your Majesty, for agreeing to this meeting."  
  
"Your message intrigued me, Doctor," Mab answered, through the growling feline voice of the giant malk by her side. Undoubtedly it was Cait Sith himself. "My, how you've changed in such a short time. Or not so short for you, I imagine."  
  
"Your Majesty's observations flatter me," I answered. "I wished, Your Majesty, to personally present to you a gift, free of any and all obligation or debt, as a gesture of respect."  
  
"And what would this gift be, Doctor?"  
  
"A demonstration, Your Majesty?" I bent slightly to a pile of crates and carefully to pick up a flower pot I had left the previous night. The flower in the pot was the same green as Mab's eyes and was covered in ice and frost.  
  
"A frozen flower, Doctor? Such a horrible way to kill such a delicate thing," Mab cooed.  
  
"If Your Majesty would deign to clear the ice and frost from the leaves and pedals?"  
  
One of Mab's Sidhe retainers accepted the flowerpot from my hands and took it to her Queen. Mab's fingers ran over the flower and cleared away the ice and frost. Intrigue came to her face as her fingers now touched the flower directly. She brought it up to her nose and took a breath. Curious surprise flashed across her features. "The flower still lives?"  
  
"Yes, Your Majesty," I answered. "It is called a _mycosia_. It is a special breed that can survive freezing. Indeed, freezing invigorates it, it feeds it."  
  
There was a small susurration from the assembled Sidhe, who stared at the flower in wonder. I showed no reaction to it while I was not in the least surprised. The beauty of the flower mattered little, for that was the province of the Summer Court. What interested the Sidhe of Winter was that this beautiful flower could _survive_ the harsh cold of Winter. That was the draw that made the flower interesting, that made it something of value to Winter.  
  
I presented a box next, out of a small pile. "There are enough seeds in these containers, Your Majesty, to begin a garden made of this flower, in all of the colors of Winter, for the delectation of you and your Court."  
  
There was more murmuring from the assembled. It hushed as Mab's hand came up gently. "A handsome gift indeed, Doctor," Mab said. "I regret that my Court's skills do not extend to growing and tending such a garden."  
  
I nodded and a smile crossed my face. "I anticipated such, Your Majesty. And I have a solution."  
  
I opened the TARDIS and reached inside. The assassin struggled against his bonds and shivered as I pulled him into the cold and brought him to his knees before Mab. The Sidhe all looked at him as he gazed at them and shivered more, and not just from the bitter cold. Undoubtedly he had long prepared himself to face the ISF or the Maskirovka or ComStar ROM, any number of brutal agencies he would have potentially crossed in his career.  
  
But nothing in his experience could prepare him for rawheads and trolls and the other monstrous members of the Winter Court. All he could do was gape in terror.  
  
"This man has proven an adept florist," I said, my smile remaining and definitely gaining an edge. "I have a claim on his life for his crimes. As part of my gift, I would grant you his service to grow your garden in Arctis Tor, indeed, in any stronghold of Winter that you deem worthy of sharing your gift with."  
  
"There are many places in Winter that would welcome such wonderful flowers, Doctor," Mab pointed out. "It could take many, many years to establish proper gardens for all of my vassals."  
  
"He will live long enough to finish his task," I promised, and I was not lying. I had injected him with the best prolong treatments I knew of. Aging would be well into the assassin's future.  
  
"And what has this man done to you, Doctor?", Mab asked pointedly. "What has he done to justify placing him in servitude to Winter?"  
  
My smile faded. "He is an assassin, Your Majesty. And in the course of his work, he murdered my Companion Katherine."  
  
I didn't bother to bring up how many he killed. Winter wouldn't care about that. But the death of Katherine was different. To the feudal sensibilities of the Sidhe, he had killed my retainer, my ward, an act for which I was justly due to inflict savage retribution on him.  
  
"And you would make him grow flowers for me as his punishment for this?" Mab's smile grew as she put two and two together. "Tell me, Doctor, how did he accomplish this murder?"  
  
"He adopted the cover of a florist, made a bomb out of a flowerpot, and filled it with _mycosia_ s," I answered plainly.  
  
That was answered by rich laughter. The laughter started with Mab through Cait Sith and rippled across the Winter Sidhe, a laughter of deep amusement and malicious appreciation.  
  
"How _wonderful!_ ", Mab proclaimed, her demeanor turning to giddy amusement with the rest of her retainers. "Doctor, I would be _most pleased_ to accept this gift in its entirety."  
  
"Your Majesty's acceptance fills me with glee," I replied formally.  
  
Mab motioned to a monstrous troll. "Be gentle, he is a Human after all." Her feline eyes twinkled as she looked to me. "The only one present, in fact."  
  
I did not answer that.  
  
The assassin had been mute with terror up to this point. But when the troll grabbed him and lifted him up he started screaming. "No! _No! Doctor! I'll do anything! Anything you want! Just don't let them take me! Please!_ "  
  
I turned my head and ignored him.  
  
"Hush now," Mab said to him as the troll carried him toward the Way. When the assassin continued to scream and plead she shook her head in bemusement. "I shall have to discipline him. Within limits, I assure you."  
  
"I trust Your Majesty's judgement in that matter." This meant she couldn't kill him or destroy him; he was still technically _my_ bondsman, on loan to her for service as part of a gift.  
  
And the last thing I wanted was for him to die any time soon.  
  
Of course, there were other methods of discipline Mab could easily use that would keep him alive and allow him to accomplish his goal... and which he would most certainly not enjoy.  
  
" _You can't do this to me! You... Doctor, you can't...!_ " The assassin's screams cut off as he was pulled into the Way. At Mab's motion retainers stepped forward to claim the boxes of seeds. They stepped through the Way next.  
  
Mab remained behind with the others and looked at me as I went to step toward the TARDIS. "Doctor, my offer stands," she said.  
  
I turned back to her. "Your offer to remove the block from my head," I stated, not questioning.  
  
"Three favors. With the same due stipulations I mentioned the last time. That is all I ask."  
  
"Your Majesty honors me with her proposal, but I must once again decline," I replied. "I have no interest in what has been taken."  
  
"Really?" Mab looked at me with curiosity. "You do not wish to regain that which you lost? To remember the man that you were?"  
  
I looked down for a moment, in thought. I considered the issue closely and realized the answer that was now in my hearts. "I do not know what I was before. Whether I was actually Human or Time Lord. But I do know one thing, Your Majesty."  
  
"And that is?"  
  
I actually smirked, damn me. "Whomever that man was, his life was _too small_." I bowed. "A pleasure to meet you again, Queen Mab. May fortune smile upon you."  
  
"And upon you, Doctor." Mab's smile became one of bemusement. "I think I shall be greatly interested in where your path will now take you, Time Lord. As it stands, your sense of retribution has become remarkably like our own."  
  
I only nodded in reply before stepping into the TARDIS. I looked back long enough to see Mab disappear into the Way. With a snap of my fingers the TARDIS doors closed. I slipped the lock into place and went to the controls.  
  
A very restrained response indeed given what Mab had just done. It was... somewhat the point, the brutal and ironic justice I had just inflicted on the assassin.  
  
The kind of justice that a Sidhe would mete out, indeed.  
  
If I hadn't been in the state I was in at the time, I would have not been looking forward to Harry finding out.  
  
The cold fury was subsiding. I had taken my... justice? Revenge? Whichever it was, I had it. The killing of Katherine and her mother had been properly dealt with.  
  
Without the fury I felt... hollow. The feeling persisted as I shifted the TARDIS out.  
  
And then, without warning, the tears came. The cold fury could no longer hold back my loss, my terrible grief.  
  
And when I looked over to see the blue mycosia I had given Katherine on her fifth birthday, still in its home on the TARDIS on one of the shelves lining the control center wall... I fell to my knees weeping.  
  
And for a long while, that was all I could do.


End file.
